Rendering Ultrasonic Imagery: The Sonic Flashlight

Effugas writes: "Fark pointed me at this brilliantly elegant new invention, the Sonic Flashlight. From the curious workshop of George Stetten, an ultrasonic scan of the inside of a patient's body is visually overlaid perceptually within the body being scanned, with no requirement for special glasses, viewing angles, or even particularly exotic hardware. How? Form a triangle with an ultrasound platform and its output display--then bisect the triangle with a half transparent(see the body below), half reflective(see the display above) pane of glass. Since the angles match, the two images merge to provide a perfectly placed synthesis of reality and its augmentation, irrespective of viewer position. Watch the video here for a demonstration; note the hand held variant at the bottom of the page as well. Slick!"

Comments

Genius

[jd142]

One of the definition of genius is the ability to take existing ideas and put them together in a new way that hadn't been previously thought of. In one sense, that exactly what this does. There isn't any major leap here; it's not a tricorder or real x-ray specs. But it is a fundamentally new way of working, and that's the genius.

Very nice , especially the hand-held unit

[spineboy]

This might catch on, for a couple of reasons
-placing IV lines in overly-nutrified people (ie. obese).
-hitting abscesses to drain and/or culture them in our lovely skin-popping junky population.

But other than that, most surgeons (me) and radiologist have developed accurate visual-spatial skills so that we can translate what we see in the remote monitor to what we are doing with our hands. I'm pretty sure that the veins present on the ultrasound image of that guys hand would easily be visable with my naked eyes or palpable (ie using my fingers to feel where it is) easily.
Ultrasound currently only has several uses in most hospital settings - looking at fetuses, looking for blood clots, gall bladders and a couple of other things. The information gained is usually poor at best - limited by the poor-quality information that is inherant in an ultrasound image. For things that really matter a CT or MRI is used.

Cute, but how useful in medical applications?

[sessamoid]

This doesn't change the fundamental usefulness of the ultrasound in medical uses. It certainly won't replace xrays or CAT scans, as the imaging modalities have fairly different applications already which are limited by the differences in x-ray and ultrasound physics.

In most medical uses, it's important to be able to change the angle at which the ultrasound image is taken. Like CAT scans, ultrasound takes images of anatomy in slices. It's generally required that certain views to visualize a certain grouping of structures is desired, and one needs to be able to get those pictures quickly at various angles. For that, the handheld transducer as used is still going to be more useful than this invention. For something like this invention, you'd have to turn the whole patient or extremity to obtain a different angle due to size of the glass panel and transducer. Not practical as it's currently implemented for most medical applications.

Re:Cute, but how useful in medical applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

This message is for those who doubt the usefulness of this invention. I was lucky enought to see Doctor Stetten's PhD defense at UNC (he already had an MD). His research involves diagnosing heart problems quickly with ultrasound.

>In most medical uses, it's important to be able >to change the angle at which the ultrasound image >is taken. Like CAT scans, ultrasound takes images >of anatomy in slices.
This used to be true, but now we have 3dimensional ultrasound, which you can't really see from the video. The advantage is immediate diagnosis. Where CT scans cost hundreds of dollars and take hours to plan and schedule, ultrasound is cheap and fast.

This goes much further, however. I work in cancer radiation treatment. A huge problem we have is matching the CT scan to the patient when the treatment is being done. This device has the potential to let technicians place the patient perfectly on the treatment table. This could really affect the survival rate of patients.

For Dr. Stetten, his invention means that he can tell if a patient has a blocked artery without surgery. Slashdotters, remember that just because _you_ can't think of the application, doesn't mean there isn't one. Doctors don't have time to waste inventing devices without use. They create things that are directly applicable to what they do.

Can be used for airport security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can a larger version of this be used to detect hidden weapons on people that are fully clothed? I guess we would have the person stand with their back to the wall then lower one of these "screens" to sort of sandwich the person between the screen and wall and we would then see if they are hiding a weapon? Why would it not work?

being careful

[Alien54]

There were reports that a suffciently young unborn child can hear the ultrasound, as seen by reactions in the womb.

Since these things are loud, it would sort of be the the equivalent of suddenly being in side a noisy train station. There has been concern expressed about possible damage

So while ultrasound is very cool, there are some times when it needs to be used with care.

OLD!

[ManualCrank Angst]

Sonic images are old hat. I remember Sega invented a device in the early 90's that could render a full-color sonic hedgehog.

Re:Nice demo, but of very dubious value

[Alik]

Untrue. (Disclaimer: I sit one desk over from one of the grad students who works on this, and I think Stetten is a cool guy.) There are a couple key areas where this is useful:

1. While a well-trained US professional can do as you say, there are a lot of hospitals that can't afford/find a well-trained professional (think rural and innner-city medical centers). If this boosts the diagnostic ability of other caregivers, it will help patients. (Now, getting it made cheap enough for those hospitals to buy... could be trickier.)

2. It's an excellent teaching tool. Well-trained professionals got that way after struggling through many years of not being able to see jack shit. Speaking as someone who's a med student on the side, I would love to be able to use the SF to compare to a normal static US scan.

3. This isn't really aimed at diagnostic US anyway. One of the big goals of the MRCAS and MERIT centers at CMU is "augmented reality" for surgery. The idea is that as the surgeon prepares to go digging around in an area whose contents are not precisely localized, he/she can take a look with the SF and know exactly where to cut.

4. Even for diagnostic uses, like US-guided biopsy, this brings improvement. Instead of having to look away from the patient to some monitor, you keep your eyes on your hands and on the patient at all times. Speaking as someone who's had to handle a laparoscope while simultaneously staring at a TV screen, it would be a lot nicer if I had that little bit of extra visual feedback about precisely what my hands and the tissue under them were doing.

Too many links

[Lazaru5]

Submitters: Please Please Please stop linking every word and phrase. It took me 5 tries before I found the actual page that text in the submission (above and below, etc) came from.